Friday, May 29, 2009

The multi-talented Kenny “Ken Flo” Florian will be taking over the broadcasting duties for Frank Mir at the upcoming World Extreme Ca- gefighting event “WEC 41: Brown vs. Faber II” on June 7th at the Arco Arena in Sacremento, Calif.  The event will be broadcast through an exclusive arrangement with the Versus television network and is already being heralded, at least by the WEC itself, as the biggest fight in featherweight history.  Florian's addition as color commentator was announced yesterday but WEC executives. 

A 20 year-old man was injured in Iowa on Saturday, breaking his neck in a Mixed Martial Arts fight.  His friends and teammates are arranging a benefit show to help with the costs of his hospital bills and physical therapy during his recovery.  Anyone able to donate through Paypal or items for auction can find the details within.

Affliction Clothing just released the poster for their third mixed martial events, aptly named "Trilogy".  The event, as rumored, takes place on August 1st from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, which is where the previous two events took place.  A main event between WAMMA heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett has been made official.

In an interview with Matt Erickson of The Northwest Times, Marc Ratner, UFC's vice president of regulatory affairs, stated that the UFC will not be back to Chicago this year, and that the UFC is looking at having an event at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, IN sometime next year.

MMAWeekly.com is reporting that sources close to T.J. Grant (14-2) and Rory Markham (16-5) have confirmed that the two will meet at "The Ultimate Fighter: UK vs US Finale" scheduled to take place on June 20, 2009 from The Pearl Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

While Affliction hasn't officially announced their third event, Fedor Emelianenko (30-1) has recently stated to M-1Global, that he will be fighting Josh Barnett (24-5) as the main event for Affliction 3. Affliction Vice President Tom Atencio says that the agreements are in place, but won't confirm the fight until they are signed.

Anthony "Rumble" Johnson (7-2) has had to withdraw form his fight against Matt "The Immortal" Brown (12-7) because of a knee injury. The fight was scheduled to be part of the televised portion of "The Ultimate Fighter: US vs UK" finale on June 20th. A day after Johnson withdrew from the fight, Brown declined to have a replacement fighter named stating he wanted heal some nagging injuries.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Bellator Fighting Championships Week 9 weigh-ins took place at the Bayou Room of the Monroe Civic Center in Monroe, Louisiana today. All four semi-finalists in the mid- dleweight tournament, Yosmany Cabezas, Jared Hess, Hector Lom- bard, and Damien Stell successfully made weight. The event takes place Friday and will air on ESPN Deportes on Saturday.

Michael Moorer, a former light heavyweight and heavyweight boxing champion, has been brought in by Andrei Arlovski to help him improve his stand up game.  Arlovski is planning on making his boxing debut on June 27th for Golden Boy Promotions. While no opponent has been named for his boxing match, Arlovski is set to take on Brett Rogers on June 6 at the Strikeforce "Lawler vs Shields" event.

According to a report by MMAJunkie.com, Frank Trigg has signed a four-fight contract with the UFC. Trigg, a jack of all trades in the industry, will be making his second stint with the organization. The first run saw the radio host, commentator, and on again off again professional wrestler, go 2-3 in the welterweight division between 2003 and 2005, with all three losses coming against arguably the two greatest welterweights of all time, when he dropped bouts to GSP and to Matt Hughes twice.

According to a report by Tatame, Ronnys Torres (14-1) has been added to the yet-to-be officially announced UFC Ultimate Fight Night 19 fight card.  The bout, for which an opponent has yet to be named, will mark the lightweight Brazilian Fighter’s debut with the organization.  Torres had originally been slated to face Melvin "The Young Assassin" Guillard (12-7-2 1NC) at UFN 18 in April before a knee injury and subsequent surgery sidelined him for the first half of this year. 

Team Benelux is poised to return to the finals in 2009 after losing the '08 M-1 Challenge Championship Cup to Team Imperial on its home turf in Amsterdam. Led by dynamic striker Jason Jones, Benelux began its campaign for redemption vs. Team Finland at the 2009 "M-1 Challenge Presented by Affliction" season opener this past February at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Wash.  The Benelux vs. Finland best-of-five series will debut this Friday in the United States on HDNet at 8 p.m. ET.